If I asked you to imagine a corset, you might see one of several things in your mindâs eye. Costumes from period dramas, usually seen on PBS or the BBC. Lingerie from specialty shops. Renaissance faire garb. The cultural imprint of the corset lies deep in our psycheâwe can all identify it, link it to memories of favorite movies, or recite the myths of women who were harmed by their corset. However, this cultural consciousness is very much based on just that: myths.
Referring to that mental picture, modern-day garments of the same shape and function would overlay any pure conceptualization of the object. You would most likely be picturing fabrics that are more diverse than the options on offer in the time period, or colors that had not yet been invented. This is because our current understanding of the world is the default in our minds, and the first thing that occurs to us may be significantly colored by our modern perceptions.
Were I then to ask you why a woman would wear a corset, similar overlaying would take place. Modern corsets are marketed as sexy, exotic, and erotic, and in many cases are quite uncomfortableâmeant to only be worn for minutes at a time, and then taken off; a prelude to the main act. But that is not what women wore them for, for the majority of time while the fashion persisted. This book will examine what we think we know, and why, and deconstruct our preconceived notions that are all bound up in lives we currently live, using the lens of bioarchaeology. To do this, I will examine skeletons from St. Brideâs church in London, and compare them to examples from the MusĂ©e de lâHomme in Paris. I will also look at four collections of corsets, dozens of reports from doctors and women of the time, and historical and contemporary takes on the idea of the corseted woman.
The corset, as seen by examples from the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Fashion Museum in Bath, St. Fagans Museum in Wales, and the National Museum of Scotland, is a garment that supports and shapes the female body in various distinct ways. Always covering the waist, but variably covering the breasts and/or hips, the corset can be used as an undergarment, used as a structural overgarment, or built into tops or dresses as the underlying structure. It began as a simple way to stiffen and shape the front of the garment with a buskâa long, straight, stiff length of materialâand went through many changes in form such as the additions of sets of stays (side stiffeners, often called bones, that radiate from the busk around the sides of the body), the overbust (from above the nipples down past the waist), the underbust (beginning under the breasts and stopping either just below the waist or at the hips), and included specialty corsets such as ones designed to accommodate pregnancy and nursing.
While the practice of wearing such garments began in the late 1500s, I will be looking only at the years between 1700 and 1900 CE. This is the time for which there is physical evidenceâexisting corsets and skeletal remainsâand so this book will focus on that short time period, resisting the temptation to focus solely on the Victorian and Edwardian periods. While these were decidedly the heyday of corsetry, and the periods where much of our corset iconography comes from, focusing so narrowly would force the data I have gathered into very tight spaces, squeezing it down to fit a narrative that we have built, rather than allowing it to tell its own story. That narrative needs to be pulled apart as well: out of 150 unique articles written about corsetry and health that were condensed to a bibliography by a writer in the early twentieth century (OâBrien 1929) and which were published between 1750 and 1930 (24 in German, 52 in French, 74 in English), 74 were identifiable as written by doctors. 16 were in support of corseting (or at least not in total condemnation of the practice). Only two were identifiably written by women. The people who create the narrative control it. And the data should tell that story, instead of the accepted narrative, for the corset is much, much more than we believe it to be. A garment which persisted for centuries, the corset reveals much more than it conceals, and this book will explore those revelationsâwhat women wore, how they wore their corsets, and what those corsets did to their bodies. But before we begin, a lexicon:
Glossary
Agency/Agentive: The concept of agency refers to a personâs ability or perceived ability to make choices regarding their own behaviors. When a person is faced with a choice between multiple actions, and they can or feel that they can make that choice, they are behaving agentively. Agency and agentive behavior are tempered or mitigated by several things: physical limitations (i.e., the choice is not physically possible); cultural limitations (the person feels that their choice would be too sanctioned or controversial, and therefore it is not considered as possible); and actual or perceived powerlessness (the person feels, correctly or not, that they do not have the ability to choose for themselves).
Anatomical normal: In this context, anatomical normal refers to the standard presentation of a skeleton or skeletal element (a bone, which makes up part of the skeleton). This is what you see if you open up a textbook on skeletal biology. The anatomically normal bone has no anomalies, deformations, or pathologiesâno disease, damage, or congenital malformations. It is your average bone, looking like a typical or standard representation of that particular bone.
Binding: To constrict something by artificial means. In this context, we will discuss binding done with fashion, or for aesthetic purposesâcorseting will be the main topic, but this book will also selectively discuss foot-binding and orthodontic braces, among other types.
Bioarchaeology: A term coined in the late 1960s to refer to the intersection of biological anthropology, that is the examination of the human condition by way of human biology, with archaeology, which is the study of material culture. This book will give a bioarchaeological look at the practice of corseting; integrating the corsetâs effect on the skeleton with what the corsets themselves can tell us about the women who wore them.
Boning: The material used to stiffen a corset. Various materials were used, depending on origin, plentitude, availability, cost, and fashion. Historically, wood, leather, whalebone, and steel were prevalent, with plastic not appearing until after our time period, and whalebone eventually falling out of popularity as steel became cheaper and easier.
Busk: The stiff material that created the front line of the corset. Depending on the shape of the garment, busks were either single (if the garment did not lace or hook in the front), or double (if it did). Busks were initially removable and changeable, but then became fully integrated into the garment, to the point that one was no longer able to purchase them for personal use, instead being available only for dressmakers, corset makers, or the repairing of both.
Corset: An undergarment or overgarment usually, though not exclusively, worn by women. The purpose of the corset was to provide shape to the wearerâs garments, creating a distinct bust, waist, and hips. Eventually the corset was replaced by the brassiere and girdle, as fashions and textile manufacture changed. The terms corset and stays are often used interchangeably in texts from the time period, and modern corset theorists and enthusiasts are not in agreement over any meaningful distinction between the two. Thus, both terms are used in this book.
Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA): Developed by Norman Fairclough (2003), the practice of Critical Discourse Analysis allows a writer to examine texts for deeper meanings than what one would get from a surface reading. Such things as a text fitting into a certain genre (letters to the editor) or collocation (what words are grouped near other, significant, words) give depth and nuance to the evaluation of the written word.
Damage/deformation: In this context, this refers to deviation away from the anatomical normal, particularly changes in the shape and structure of skeletal elements such as ribs and vertebrae due to the long-term pressure of the corset. This usage does not imply trauma, or even necessarily excessive pain, merely that the bone was altered or deformed by corset use.
Hegemonic Patriarchy: The idea that a male-oriented social order is currently the dominant (or hegemonic) social order, and has been for a considerable amount of recent history. This concept is generally understood to be referring to the geographic and cultural âwestâ (Europe and North America), and reflects the social realities of women being seen as culturally less than their male counterparts. These social realities contain multitudes of exemplars, but can be shown by women being expected to compromise their careers if they want to bear and raise children, women being paid less than men for similar jobs, womenâs pain levels being taken less seriously than menâs, and womenâs clothing and personal presentation emphasizing beauty standards over comfort. How much these social realities effect individual women varies within time periods, locations, and from woman to woman, but the concept of hegemonic patriarchy provides the overarching structure under which we experience them.
Rib: The human skeleton contains 24 ribs, 12 pairs, which are attached in the back of the body to the thoracic vertebrae, and in the front of the body to the sternum by way of cartilage. Both male and female bodies contain ribs in the same number and configuration, and apart from variations in size, there is no real way to tell male from female just by examination of these skeletal elements.
Sexual dimorphism: The natural phenomenon of different biological sexes having different body shapes or sizes. This is not present in all animal species, but is present in various ways in our species. Male Homo sapiens are generally larger and more robust than females, and various markers on the skeleton (landmarks on the skull, pelvis, and femur, primarily) indicate the sex of the individual to a trained eye. This is not to ignore nonbinary or intersex individuals, or trans individuals. Those categories are marked by the biological anthropologist as well, and we proceed with a recognition that biological sexing is not exact, and that a skeleton cannot ever completely give us the lived experience of the individual, and so says very little about gender identity or presentation unless other things are known about that person.
Skeletal remains or skeleton: Skeletal remains, or the skeleton, are what is left when a body has naturally decayed or artificially been defleshed. Generally consisting of 206 bones (if an adult, as were most I will discuss here), the skeleton forms the substructure of the human body, and is comprised of a collagenated matrix onto which a calcium-based cell structure is deposited. Skeletal remains can reveal age, sex, ancestry, stature, what a person ate and drank, and within reason what stresses (repetitive motions, pressure and constriction, breaks, diseases, and malnourishments) the body has undergone.
Spinous process: The bony protrusion on the back of the vertebra. It points downward at an approximately 45-degree angle on an anatomically normal vertebra. This is what you feel if your run your fingers down your own back.
Stays: The word stay or stays is occasionally used interchangeably with corset, and refers to a bound undergarment that contains boning, but which may or may not contain a busk.
Vertebra/vertebrae: The elements of the spinal columnâhumans have seven vertebrae in the cervical or neck region, 12 in the thoracic region, and 5 in the lumbar, or lower back region. Those referred to in this book are the thoracic vertebrae unless otherwise indicated.
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As a practice in urban areas, like London, where the main skeletal evidence originates, corseting crossed socioeconomic lines, spanning the gamut of female stations from the very wealthy to the impoverished. London, among other centers of trade and fashion, had a thriving second-hand market of clothing of all types. Corsets were not a once-in-a-lifetime purchase for upper-class London women, but a fashionable, yearly changing garment that would be updated as the styles changed. As such, older, out of fashion corsets would either be passed to the servants as gifts, or sold to garment merchants. Clothing stalls would resell old garments for pence on the pound, making the styles of the previous years affordable to all but the poorest of women. Additionally, much as women of the twenty-first century would think twice about going out to dine without wearing a bra, likewise did city women of the 1700â1900 period consider their corset an integral part of polite dress for civilized interactions in public.
Why, you may be asking yourself, have I chosen to concentrate on the rather neatly squared off time period of AD 1700â1900? Why not look at the Victorian period, or the Early Modern period, or other useful shorthanded designations? The short answer is the availability of archaeological data. Because I will be approaching this topic from the standpoint of a bioarchaeologist, I need to be able to examine physical thingsâremains and garments from the time period. I ran into issues of artifac...